I've written again an again about needed to upgrade my system to handle HD video editing and gaming. I researched hard and ran the gambit with all manufactures. My issues were simple, I wanted a 1 (or 2 gig video card) Intel I7 Process and lots of other things to make a complete kick butt machine that wouldn't break me.

I thought I'd give Dell another try, I know they went to crap, but I heard they had gotten better with the new CEO. I wasted an hour and a half one day trying to simply upgrade the power supply to handle the video card and the lame "tech" wasted my time not helping, I'll never buy another Dell, they can't even get an order right (we text chatted all that time - seems text chatting is the option 1) because they can handle many calls at one and 2) likely their English would give them away as being on some foreign soil, yet appear more local cause text has no dialect) I don't doubt for a second, I was texting to India or Pakistan or somewhere other than the states.

Any way, they sucked and I kept searching, all the while keeping a close eye on the following Gateway - rated very high by PCMag, CNET and customers.

here is the link from Tigerdirect - who I did not buy it from, but it is the BEST constructed page I have ever seen on a product. My final price was $1423.96 including next day deliver free through Amazon.

Here is the beast (I named it already) and it came today, but I was at work and it needed signing for, so now I need to drive the 8 miles to the UPS shipping Center and pick it up - not a big deal, because there is a Best Buys and PC Richards on the way :) gonna buy one kick-butt game and a wireless gaming controller to go with it!

I ran THIS configuration on all the sites where you could customise the PC and every time it would cost $500 more for the same features. It was a no brainer to me to get this one after all the comparisons.

Look at all the details and the great photos Tigerdirect has - all sites dhould be so detailed with their products

I'll be hooking it up tonight of course, and give you first impressions tomorrow. The best thing, I have about 150 hours of HD video that I can now edit and get back into the Youtube Business. Including daily (or so) shows, somethng I've avoided because I hate RAW footage, there is no talent in that (I want to be a video editor and no computer can deal with my HD camera stuff.) not to forget, now I can stream in HD on BlogTV, something I'm really excited to do too.

So, for you techies, tell me, what do you think - not a bad step up from a 1.66ghz notebook HDMI'ed to my TV. The streaming TV Shows and HD Youtube stuff is about to come alive on my screen. Many people are going 1080p on Youtube, currently I can only steam about 5 frames a second there - that is seriously about to change.

Please enjoy the forum, and if it has helped you in any way, we hope that a small donation can be made to support our FULLY member supported forum. You will never see advertisements here, and that is because of the generous members who have made our forum possible. We are in our second decade as a beekeeping forum and all thanks to member support. At the top right of every page is a donations link. Please help if you can.

congrats. i was just wondering the other day about your machine. let us know what you think after you are done playing with it :-D

Logged

.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Please enjoy the forum, and if it has helped you in any way, we hope that a small donation can be made to support our FULLY member supported forum. You will never see advertisements here, and that is because of the generous members who have made our forum possible. We are in our second decade as a beekeeping forum and all thanks to member support. At the top right of every page is a donations link. Please help if you can.

Like you, I am very fond of my video games. I'm addicted to the Medal Of Honor and Call of Duty series. At first I played these on my PC, but found out that you constantly had to upgrade RAM and Video cards in order to keep up with the minimum game requirements. On the last desktop model that I purchased, I went over the top on everything and within 6 months it was already obsolete. Now I can do everything that I want computer wise with my laptop and leave my gaming to the PS3 and Xbox. I think its cheaper in the long run to buy one of the gaming systems and do everything else with your PC. Congrats on your purchase though. I just got tired of trying to keep up with the ever changing advances in PC technology.

Well... Day 2 and I've feverishly been installing all the stuff I had in my previous PC and YES Ken, first things first - I installed the Norton Suite :)

I bought Bioshock (and the Microsoft game controller (you need 5 hands to operate it, or two coordinated ones - lol. But I'm learning. I also got the CRYSIS Wargame - known as "The BENCHMARK" of high end video games, and it runs flawlessly.

I installed Movie Edit Pro 16 HD and I'm reinstalling it now, not sure what happened, but it wont boot up today (of course as per Windows, over 40 updates installed last night when I went to close down, so who knows - I'll follow up.)

But I took the 112 Bud2 videos and put them in a folder on the desktop, diconnect the camera and watched EVERYTHING full screen at glorious frame rate - really perfect and I can't wait to get editing - my main reason for buying the Beast!!!

Interesting, MP4 (apple Quicktime Movies format) is the only format that doesn't COME with the movie editor, you need to pay $4.99 (via paypal, etc) to edit mp4 which is what I shoot with the cam.

Also, I just noticed the issue many of us have had with the forum software, that is the line I'm typing on keeps jumping below the reply/post window so that I cannot read it - I know this is an Explorer issue, I haven't got Firefox in here yet.

Good thing, I'm still using my wireless Keyboard and mouse and found an okay place for the BIG BEWAT. I saw an Alienware (Dell) PC yesterday and it was literally about 3 feet deep, that is rediculous.

So, I can't stand typing in Explorer, so next post will be in Firefox. The big change (and I'll need some viewers for that) will be when I Iget FME (Flash Media Encoder) setup for BlogTV - I have the cam and resourses now for one of the highest HQ cam at blog - yeeeheee.

So, I've spent a whole lot more on PCs than $1423 and NEVER got a machine anything close to this one!!!

Please enjoy the forum, and if it has helped you in any way, we hope that a small donation can be made to support our FULLY member supported forum. You will never see advertisements here, and that is because of the generous members who have made our forum possible. We are in our second decade as a beekeeping forum and all thanks to member support. At the top right of every page is a donations link. Please help if you can.